Ajax: Just Like A Backdoor Thief

January 2, 2007 on 6:19 pm | In Web Design, Web Programming |

So why the devil, after saying so many good things earlier about Ajax, such as likening it to vitamin pills and fast food (hmmmm.. that might not be so good…) am I painting it a sinister shade?

Well actually I don’t intend to imply criminality, it’s more like robbing Peter to pay Paul… and what’s being transferred is page views.

Ajax, as most techies know, stands for Asynchronous JavaScript And XML. It’s a programming strategy that enables a web page to be updated with new information without the page reloading each time. Google Maps and Gmail are examples.

With a non-Ajax page, if you caused a page to change, a page reload would have to occur. But not with an Ajax page. The page is updated without a reload, which implies you can experience multiple page views without the page reloading.

So what’s the big deal? I’ll tell you what. Web analytics programs, which measure page views (among other things), depend on page reloads to increment their page view counter. With Ajax, the page views occur without the page reloads. The accuracy of your web analytics program’s page view figures is therefore significantly diminished and could mislead you.

It’s like the web analytics program is guarding the front door of your house while all the time, stuff’s being taken out the back!

The solution: Web analytics programs have to start watching the ‘back door’ too!

Matt Cutts, the famous/infamous Google engineer, screamed about this in his blog recently, you might want to look at Matt’s post to delve deeper…

I take this opportunity to wish your web analytics program a happy and prosperous 2007 —